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MAC Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks: Tackling the Problem of Unidirectional Links

Authors:
Stephan Mank
Reinhardt Karnapke
Jörg Nolte

Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks; MAC Protocols; Unidirectional Links

Abstract:
Experiments have shown that unidirectional links are quite common in wireless sensor networks. Still, many MAC protocols ignore their existence, even though they have a tremendous impact on the performance of both TDMA- and contention based protocols. In contention based protocols the medium may be assumed free when it is indeed busy. In TDMA based protocols two neighboring nodes might get assigned the same slot even though there is an unidirectional link between them. In this paper we discuss the influence of unidirectional links on communication protocols in wireless sensor networks, focusing on MAC protocols. We also present two protocols that do not only eliminate the negative side effects of unidirectional links, but use them for message transmission as well.

Pages: 218 to 229

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2009. Used with permission.

Publication date: March 17, 2010

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2644